1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for manufacturing a polymeric fiber and a process for producing a wound dressing composed of the polymeric fiber. The present invention also relates to the polymeric fiber and wound dressing produced by the method according to the present invention.
2. Description of the Prior Arts
Current wound dressings are composed of materials and with a form of gel, film or sponge. These dressings have been commercially available for a period of time; however, when considering their applications in some aspects, there are still existing problems due to their mechanical strength, absorption amount and absorbing rate. The most common structure of wound dressings in the field includes sponge-like and non-woven fabrics, wherein permeability of the non-woven fabrics is better than that of the sponge-like fabrics. Most of all, non-woven fabrics has a structure suitable for absorbing cells and allowing cells to proliferate. Furthermore, non-woven fabrics have fair softness and certain degree of mechanical strength and can be produced by continuous process so as to have benefits to reduce its cost.
Common wound dressing is usually made of recycled natural polymeric fiber. Current polymeric fiber is made by wet spinning with requirement for lyophilization of wet spins to form polymeric fibers. As known, lyophilization is energy-consuming. Moreover, for non-woven fabrics manufactured by wet-laid process, an additional lyophilization is required. For non-woven fabrics manufactured by needle punch, an additional needle punch machine is required. To summarize, conventional methods for manufacturing natural polymeric fiber or for producing non-woven fabrics as wound dressings in the field is energy consuming and requires extra expensive apparatuses.
To overcome the shortcomings of the conventional techniques for manufacturing fibers and fabrics composed thereof, the present invention provides a method for producing a polymeric fiber to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.